Norbreck Castle Hotel

Driving down the prom today I couldn't resist this blip opportunity.
This is the Norbreck Castle Hotel a large hotel located on Queens Promenade in the Norbreck area of Blackpool, Lancashire England on the sea front. The hotel has 480 bedrooms and 22 conference suites including the Norcalympia Conference Centre.Originally built as a large private country house in 1869, it was purchased around the end of the 19th century by J.H. Shorrocks who used the house to entertain friends and colleagues at lavish weekend parties. The popularity of these parties led to Shorrocks running them on a commercial basis by taking paying guests.
In 1912, Shorrocks formed a public company and expanded the building, now named the Norbreck Hydro, in several phases, adding a ballroom, swimming pool and solarium in the early 1930s. By then the Hydro was patronised by nobility and the British upper class, in addition to being a venue for the top stars of stage, screen and radio.

During World War II the hotel was commandeered by the British government as offices and accommodation for evacuated civil servants.The hotel remained under government control for eleven years until being handed back in 1951. At that time the hotel had - Open air car parking for 250 cars, five tennis courts, an 18 hole golf course, a bowling green, a 600 seat restaurant, a ballroom which when used for conferences seated 850, a second smaller ballroom for private parties, two cocktail bars, a swimming pool and 400 bedrooms, 97 of which had private bathrooms.
In the late 1970s, the hotel's disco became the venue for a number of concerts by punk rock, new wave and Mod revival bands. Those who played there included the Angelic Upstarts, Penetration and the Purple Hearts. The venue also saw gigs by two bands before they became famous. Adam and the Ants performed there when they were still a punk rock band in March 1979, a performance which One Way System drummer Dave Brown, listed in his top five gigs. And on 15 March 1979, The Pretenders played one of their first ever gigs at the Norbreck.
In 1988, the hotel was the venue for a conference where the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party merged to form the Liberal Democrats. Writing in the New Statesman about the merger, the writer Jonathan Calder said of the hotel, "Blackpool?s Norbreck Castle Hotel does not lift the spirit at the best of times, and in January 1988 its Soviet ambience was enhanced by the trams and melting snow in the streets outside."
In 2003, a group of fifteen children who had just returned from Hong Kong to study at Rossall School were isolated at the hotel over SARS concerns and were kept in a self-contained wing with a nurse. However, they had to be removed by Rossall School for their safety when hotel guests found out the children were staying there, after the story was leaked to the local press and what was described as an "abusive mob" of hotel guests forced the children to be removed from the hotel. Source:Wikipedia
Blue hoarding is enclosing an area being developed into luxury apartments;the Hotel is currently owned by Britannia Hotels.